The World is Wonderland
by Kaidence28
Summary: The story of how Alice and Wonderland has many stories behind it, which is what this is. Alice Liddell is no longer a child, but a teenager, dealing with her same life but in a completely different circumstance. She'll find love, and even insanity.
1. Chapter One: Headed Back East

The clock on the wall looked like a picture. It seemed that it had been frozen on the same time forever now, and the more I stared at it, the more frustrated I became.

It was a Friday afternoon, and like every Friday afternoon found me, I was in my math class. Math had never been my strongest subject, the numbers never did what I wanted them to do, it was like they were beings with minds of their own. It never made any sense.

To make matters worse, my patience was being stretched even thinner today. The moment the final bell rang and excused me from the prison that was class, I would be free to leave not only the school, but the state. I was going on vacation, the annual family vacation that happened every year. It was an escape that I had been looking forward to for a long time now.

Finally, the numbers turned, and the picture changed. The bell rang, sounding annoying in my ear, but I didn't care. The irritating sound meant freedom.

Before anyone could tell me otherwise, I jumped out of my seat and ran to the door, ready to taste freedom with my tongue, see it with my eyes, feel it with my hands, and hear it in my ears.

The door flung open, I ran down the already busy hallway, sprinting to my locker. I ran into about five people, but I said nothing close to an apology. I wasn't going to waste my time with that sort of thing.

I finally arrived in front of my locker and flung it open, throwing my books sloppily inside and slamming the door. I wouldn't need them for awhile, not where I was going.

I took off down the stairs and out the front entrance of the school, out to my car. There was a slight breeze that played with my hair, making it move in unnatural directions, but I ignored it. Nothing could bring me down.

I had gotten out of the school fast enough that I beat all the traffic coming out of the parking lot, allowing me to speed home.

'Home' was probably one of the fanciest and expensive homes in the school district in which I attended. It was a mansion on a hill, no exaggerations. It belonged me, my many sisters and parents.

I may have had many sisters, but the truth was that besides Elizabeth, who was close to me in age and was my junior, and my older sister Lorina, I didn't talk to them very much. Lorina, Edith, and I were the closest and we spent endless amounts of time together.

My parents were Henry and Lorina Hanna, both of whom were very well off and successful. My father was a college dean, a very intelligent man.

I pulled my car into my part of the garage, which was up a driveway that was definitely steeper, hence the hill.

As I closed the door to the car behind me, the garage door closed behind me, taking all light from the day away with it's closing.

I walked into the house where I found Edith sitting at the kitchen table, eating Oreo cookies. She was pulling them apart and licking the frosting off before dunking the chocolate cookies into a glass of milk.

"Why do you eat them like that?" I asked, sitting down next to her and helping myself to her cookies.

"Because there's no proper, well reasoned way to eat Oreos, and I decided to eat them this way. Do you have a problem with that?" She asked.

"No, just curious." Without tearing open a cookie, I dunked it full on in the milk before standing up and walking away. "For the record though," I said with my mouth full, "it tastes better if you do it this way."

I left the room, but not before watching Elizabeth take my suggestion and dump the cookie as I did.

I smiled as I walked up the grand staircase that took me to a long hallway with all the bedrooms. Edith was pretty cool when she thought about being that way.

At the very end of the hall was my bedroom, in which I had already started packing for the trip east to Oxford. I was excited, it would be the first time that I went anywhere near my birthplace of the Westminster area.

The only thing that I had left to throw into the large suitcase that sat on the top of my bed was a few shirts and toiletries. When that was done, I zipped it shut and set it by the door. I was very excited to be able to return that close to home.

It wasn't that I didn't totally love the United States, I really did, but there was something about Europe that just couldn't be remade in the States no matter how hard architects tried.

I flung myself back on my bed and stared up at the smooth ceiling. In just a few hours, I would be on an adventure, where I had the potential to meet new people, make new friends, and see sights that hadn't been there when I was younger. I only wished that we were leaving this very moment.

My eyes sunk closed and my lips rose in the corners as I imagined the beautiful sights and sounds that I would soon be sensing.

I couldn't believe it. I was on a plane that was just about to land, a plane that was just about to put me in my most favorite place in the world. I looked out the window and with excitement noticed that we were close enough to the ground that I could see the buildings, homes, and other features that the ground had to offer. It was just as beautiful as I had remembered it.

"Glad to be coming so close to home?" Lorina asked from where she sat next to me.

"So glad," I answered without tearing my eyes from the window and the beautiful sights. I had dreamed of this day for so long and now it was no dream, it was reality.

"I am, too. It's been too long since we've visited," she said from behind a magazine. She turned the page. "I'm most excited to see the church. It really was beautiful, and I hope it's as nice as I remember it."

"Of course it will be," I said, shocked that she could be so disbelieving in the beauty of it.

"You never know," she pointed out, sighing over some actor in the magazine.

I rolled my eyes and continued looking out the window, counting down the minutes until we landed and I could run out of the gate and out into the world. It would be one of my happiest moments of this year, I just knew it.


	2. Chapter Two: In front of the Church

***Author's note(Wow, how official does that sound? And you want to know something? When I put the final parentheses on here so it is all proper, it will make a frowny face. How sad.): Some of you may have noticed that I changed the name of Alice Liddell's younger sister. This was my decision when it came to modernizing the story. I felt that Edith was far too old fashioned for the purpose of the story.***

Have you ever had that feeling when you were listening to the radio and a song came on that you really, truly loved? And it was one that you hadn't heard in an extremely long while? Your heart suddenly felt pounds lighter, and any hope that had left suddenly came rushing back in like water from a rapid river as it traveled down the riverbed?

That feeling is what I felt when I saw the Oxford Church. It was as beautiful as I had remembered it, all those years ago. It was an image in my head that no photo could recapture, no matter how many pictures I took with my digital camera. No matter how many times I had seen the picture in books or online, it would never be as beautiful as I saw it now.

Lorina was snapping pictures next to me, but I could see from just her facial expressions that she was nowhere near as enthralled as I was. It was if she was there, physically, but not mentally. Her mind was somewhere else entirely. I wished she would return to earth. It was moments like this that I wished that she was the way she was a few years ago. She was always there for me, always on earth, and never failing to see the true beauty in everything she saw. I had never discovered the change that made her the way she was today, but it was something that I had always wanted to know.

"Lorina, what's wrong?" I asked quietly as we walked around the outside of the church. My parents had taken all my younger sisters, including Elizabeth inside, leaving Lorina and I outside.

She looked up at me, her eyes dead. I had always been jealous of her eyes, they were beautiful, like some sort of jewel. I wasn't jealous of them today. It looked like she had suffered from a sleepless night, a night full of nightmares raging through her head, preventing any sort of comfort.

"What do you mean, Alice? Nothing is wrong." Her words were short, clipped, and cold. She began walking faster, becoming a few steps ahead of me.

"I don't believe you," I said, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back to where I stood just in front of the church's entrance. I pulled her out of the way so that visitors could get through the doors.

"Why? What's not to believe? Nothing's wrong, Alice. Just trust me and leave me alone."

Even with my camera in one hand, I didn't let her go. I wasn't letting her go anywhere until she told me what was eating at her. I could tell that there was _something._

"You aren't the same person that I remember. Slowly, ever so slowly, it's been like you've been moving apart from me. I don't want to lose you to whatever it is I'm losing you to. I need to know what it is."

She pulled out her cell phone and ran her fingers over it, then over it again. She stared at it's screen, silent.

"Alice, it's not something I can talk about. It's not something I _want_ to talk about. I remember who I was, too. It's not something I can forget. I know that I was happy, and full of life. I know that. I know that now I'm like every other rotten teenage girl out there, who feels she has to waste her time on her cell phone or looking at the latest tabloid magazines. I'm that way because it's the only thing that makes me feel normal. I'm _not_ normal, Alice. I used to be, but I can never be normal again. I'm ruined."

"Nobody can tell you who you want to be, Lorina. Nobody but you. I don't see why you can't tell me. You used to tell me everything. I remember you on the plane, when you said that the church might not be as beautiful as it once was. I remember you sticking your head into that magazine. I also know that who you were then is not who you really are. I won't rest until I know what is eating away at you. I'm not going to let you change who you are."

She looked at the street and shook her head, her hair swishing back and forth. "Don't waste your time on me, Alice. I'm not worth it. Your life is so filled with talents and potential, don't waste the time that should be used developing those on me."

She clicked her phone shut and walked up the walkway and into the church, the doors closing behind her.

I stood out there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what had made my sister, my best friend, this way.

I sighed and lifted my camera, walking out a few paces to catch another picture of the church.

Just as I was about to raise the camera and take a picture, a voice stopped me in the action.

"Are you a photographer, too?"

I spun around and saw a man, no older than the age of 28 or 29. He may not have been very old, but to my 16 years, there was an entire lifetime between us. The obvious age difference made me a bit nervous, and I suddenly wished that I had my entire family at my side. It wasn't that I was afraid that the guy might try anything, but-one could never be too safe.

"No," I said, letting my arm that held my camera rest at my side. "No, I'm not. Just a tourist, but, you said 'too,' are you a photographer?"

He smiled at me, a friendly smile, a smile that made me feel a slight bit better, but sent chills down my back all the same..

He raised a fancy camera up from where it hung on his neck. "Yes, and today seemed the perfect day to come and get pictures of the Church. It's a beautiful day," he said, looking up at a cloudless, blue sky.

"It is a nice day," I agreed, looking up to the sky. It only enhanced the church's beauty.

"I'm Lewis," he said, holding out his hand for me to shake.

I took his hand, but hesitantly. "Alice," I said, introducing myself.

"Hello, Alice. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of posing in some of my pictures. Still lifes like a picture of the church are always beautiful, but much more dazzling with life in it."

I couldn't help but feel flattered. "I would love to."

He directed me where he wanted to stand, told me how I should pose, and then proceeded on saying a whole mess of other photography terms that I didn't understand.

That was how I met Lewis Carroll.


End file.
